1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to video games. More particularly, the present invention relates to a video game for controlling battles between a player character and an enemy character on a screen, and a video game for controlling battles between an enemy character and multiple player characters operated by multiple individual players playing the game over a network.
2. Description of Related Art
Role playing games are one genre of video game played using a computer. In a typical role playing game the player takes the role of a particular character in the game and experiences simulated adventures through the character that the player controls (referred to below as the “player character”) as the story unfolds. In many such games the player character and opposing character (referred to below as the “enemy character”) are placed in set zones created in a virtual space. As the player character advances into a zone, the player character fights with an enemy character trying to thwart the player character's attempts to achieve the goal of the story. The story advances when the player character defeats the enemy character.
The player character is typically controlled using buttons on a keypad or joystick. The player character moves and performs specific actions in response to keypad operations. Numerous battle scenes and other events are distributed throughout the story. The game advances as a result of selected operations performed at each event.
Battle scenes in most prior art video games are one-to-one battles between the player character and an enemy character, but video games in which multiple player characters battle multiple enemy characters have also been proposed as a way to make the game more interesting. In video games in which multiple player characters battle multiple enemy characters in a single display screen, however, the action (command) performed by each player character must first be set and the character actions are performed all at once after all player actions have been set.
A drawback to such conventional video games is that even though multiple player characters are present, the number of players has simply increased and once the player instructs the game to execute the selected player actions, the game takes over and there is no way for the player (user) to intervene. In addition, the sequence of play following each character performing a command on the screen, that is, which character has the next turn, is not clear, game action does not proceed smoothly, and the game, thus, loses interest.
There is therefore a need for a video game in which it is easy to determine the sequence of play following each character performing a command on the screen. There is a further need for a video game in which multiple characters can be flexibly and strategically controlled to take advantage of the specific features of each character.
Video game machines having a communications function for connecting to a game server over a network have also recently become available. When a user connects to a game server using such a network-compatible video game machine and accesses a game playing service from the game server, an unknown number of players can simultaneously participate in the same game over the network with the characters controlled by the other players displayed in addition to the user's own player character on the display of the user's video game machine.
The drawback to such video games played by multiple players over a network is again that the sequence of play following each character performing a command on the screen, that is, which character has the next turn, is not clear, game action does not proceed smoothly, and the game, thus, loses interest.
There is, therefore, a need for a video game in which it is easy to determine the sequence of play following each character performing a command on the screen. There is a further need for a video game in which multiple characters can be flexibly and strategically controlled to take advantage of the specific features of each character.